Friday, April 12, 2013

Margaret Thatcher to be embalmed!

I hereby reveal the following copy due for publication in one of Britain's papers today, but which was suppressed by the editors 'for security reasons'.

Word has been leaked from a reliable source in the undertaking business that Margaret Thatcher's body is being secretly embalmed and is scheduled to be put on display for the adoring masses in the near future. The controversial decision has been made by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor in conjunction with Mrs Thatcher's son Mark and international envoy Tony Blair, sanctioned by royal permission from the Queen. The funeral mortuary will be built at an as yet undisclosed location in central London, obliterating the site of a council sink estate which has been placed under a compulsory purchase order.

Taxpayer money will be used to fund both the purchase and the edifice yet to be constructed, as well as to maintain the 7 day, 24 hour private security contractors that will be required to keep the building and its contents safe for eternity. The architecture is rumoured to be modelled on the state mortuary that houses Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang, North Korea and also the US embassy in Baghdad, but in this case the union jack will fly from the summit alongside the Falklands flag. Iain Duncan Smith's Workfare scheme has been marked to provide the huge unskilled workforce that will be required for the task.

World celebrities expected to attend the funeral service at St. Paul's Cathedral include dignitaries as diverse as Henry Kissinger, Tommy Suharto, son of the former Indonesian dictator, Donald Rumsfeld, Baby Doc Duvalier, Polly Toynbee, Roy Hattersley, Zachary DeLorean, Rupert Murdoch, Norman Tebbit and Pol Pot's daughter Saloth Sitha. A surprise bouquet of flowers has been sent by Martin McGuinness, former chief of staff in the Provisional IRA, with the words 'sorry for the unseemly parties in Belfast and Derry by misguided republicans' on it.

Comments (14 of 14)

by Brian Clarke - AllVoicesThu Apr 11, 2013 06:00

Thousands of cheering people have held parties to 'celebrate' the death of Margaret Thatcher.
A crowd assembled in Glasgow's George Square where in 1989 protests to the introduction of Thatcher's poll tax took place.Some wore party hats and streamers while a bottle of champagne was cracked with a toast to the deathof Baroness Thatcher.

The Anti-Bedroom Tax Federation, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Working Party, the International Socialist Group, were also joined by the public to mark the occasion. People also gathered in Brixton, south London the scene of fierce riots in 1981 two years into her first time in office.

In British Occupied Ireland a crowd gathered in Derry to 'celebrate' the death. Many waving Tricolour flags gathered at the famous Free Derry Corner in the city's Bogside. Chinese lanterns were lit as families gathered in the area. Crowds also gathered on the Falls Road in west Belfast. TH he left did little to disguise their jubilation at her death.

However there was one notable in Martin McGuinness, who after attending the last Tory conference, the courtisied to the Queen while embracing her white glove with his naked commoner flesh he then ordered all celebrations of Thatchers death to cease.

George Galloway, ex-Labour , denounce her policies on apartheid and Ireland. “May she burn in the hellfires. She was a witch.” Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone, when the Greater London Council was abolished by Lady Thatcher, said “She created today’s housing crisis, she produced the banking crisis, she created the benefits crisis. Every real problem we face today is the legacy of the fact she was fundamentally wrong.”

Musician celebrity, Morrissey, long a critic of Baroness Thatcher, berated her as "barbaric, without an atom of humanity". His creations include, tracks such as Margaret On The Guillotine. He claimed she was "charged by negativity" and said she "closed" rather than opened the doors for women as the first female PM.He further said: "Thatcher is remembered as The Iron Lady because she possessed completely negative traits with as persistent stubbornness and refusal to listen to others.

"Every move she made was charged by negativity; she destroyed the British manufacturing industry, she hated the miners, she hated the arts, she hated the Irish freedom fighters and allowed them to die, she hated the English poor and did nothing at all to help them, she hated Greenpeace and environmental protectionists, she was the only European political leader who opposed a ban on the Ivory Trade, she had no wit and no warmth and even her own Cabinet booted her out.

Thatcher will only be fondly remembered by sentimentalists who did not suffer under her leadership, but the majority of British working people have forgotten her already, and the people of Argentina will be celebrating her death. As a matter of recorded fact, Thatcher was a terror without an atom of humanity," he said.

Film director Ken Loach described her as "an enemy of the working class. Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and destructive Prime Minister of modern times. Mass unemployment, factory closures, communities destroyed – this is her legacy. She was a fighter and her enemy was the British working class. Her victories were aided by the politically corrupt leaders of the Labour Party and of many Trades Unions. It is because of policies begun by her that we are in this mess today.
"Other prime ministers have followed her path, notably Tony Blair. She was the organ grinder, he was the monkey. Remember she called Mandela a terrorist and took tea with the torturer and murderer Pinochet.How should we honour her? Let’s privatise her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It's what she would have wanted."

Provisional Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said Thatcher caused "great hurt to the Irish and British people. Working class communities were devastated in Britain because of her policies..Margaret Thatcher will be especially remembered for her shameful role during the epic hunger strikes of 1980 and 81.Her Irish policy failed miserably."

The general secretary of Durham Miners' Association said Baroness Thatcher's death was a "great day" for coal miners.Ex-miner David Hopper, 70, spent all of his working life at Wearmouth Colliery, said: "It looks like one of the best birthdays I have ever had. There's no sympathy from me for what she did to our community. She destroyed our community, our villages and our people. For the union this could not come soon enough and I'm pleased that I have outlived her. It's a great day for all the miners, I imagine we will have a counter demonstration when they have her funeral. Our children have got no jobs and the community is full of problems. There's no work and no money and it's very sad the legacy she has left behind. She absolutely hated working people and I have got very bitter memories of what she did. She turned all the nation against us and the violence that was meted out on us was terrible. I would say to those people who want to mourn her that they're lucky she did not treat them like she treated us.

Darren Vaines, 47, a former miner who worked in West Yorkshire and was on strike for 12 months said: "It's a very strange emotional feeling because her death brings back a lot of memories and opens up a wound that has never really healed. The cut went so deep people have never been able to forget about it. It's something they can never get out of their system." His friend and colleague David Jones was killed at 24 when violence erupted on a picket line at Ollerton, Nottinghamshire in 1984, also said many communities have never come to terms with Mrs Thatcher's actions.

Baroness Thatcher’s divisive legacy continues with not just old political foes who appeared to welcome her death. When the news reached National Union of Students (NUS) conference, it was met with applause and cheering.

"Martin McGuinness has called for an end to republicans organising parties to celebrate Margaret Thatcher's death, even though she was the IRA's No 1 target when he was the Provisionals' chief of staff during the 1980s.

In a move that surprised many republicans, the Sinn Féin deputy first minister said on Tuesday that people should not celebrate Lady Thatcher's death.

Celebrations were held in McGuinness' home city of Derry: dissident republicans held a party close to the spot of the Bloody Sunday massacre on Monday, the night of her death.

In republican West Belfast, people gathered near a mural dedicated to the memory of the IRA hunger strike Bobby Sands to celebrate the former prime minister's death. People drank beer and released Chinese lanterns into the air, while passing motorists on the Falls Road honked car horns.

But McGuinness, who was once one of the most powerful figures in the Provisional IRA, implored republicans and nationalists to "resist celebrating the death of Margaret Thatcher". Sinn Féin's chief negotiator during negotiations for the IRA ceasefire and the peace process said: "She was not a peacemaker, but it is a mistake to allow her death to poison our minds."

Unionist politicians denounced the partying as ghoulish and disgusting. Further celebrations in republican redoubts of Northern Ireland are planned for Lady Thatcher's funeral next week.

Jim Allister, a hardline Traditional Unionist Voice member of the Stormont Assembly, said: "What an insight into the depravity of IRA supporters: their ghoulish street parties to celebrate the death of Mrs Thatcher."

Jonathan Bell, a Democratic Unionist Assembly member for Strangford, said: "While many will differ on policy, such is the nature of the democratic process, all right-thinking people will regard the carnival celebrations following Baroness Thatcher's death deeply inappropriate. At a time of bereavement there should be human compassion for those in mourning."

Unionist politicians were not the only ones denouncing the street parties. David Ford, the leader of the centrist Alliance Party and the justice minister of Northern Ireland, said that while many people disagreed with Baroness Thatcher's policies, "this is no cause for the scenes we have witnessed".

Ford added: "There can never be any justification for the celebration of the death of another human. It is wrong and they should not have taken place."

Alan Shatter, his counterpart in the Irish Republic, also criticised Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin president, for claiming Lady Thatcher caused huge hurt to the Irish people. Shatter said Adams should remember that the Provisional IRA caused a great deal of hurt during the Troubles.

Shatter said: "I think those who comment critically on Margaret Thatcher, in particular those in Sinn Féin who do so, shouldn't be allowed to forget that they were directly responsible, and the Provisional IRA, were responsible for a murderous bombing of a Conservative Party conference that resulted in the death of a number of people."

The Irish Justice Minister was commenting on the IRA's attempt to kill Lady Thatcher and her cabinet in the 1984 Brighton Bomb. Following the explosion at the Grand Hotel during the Tory Party conference, the IRA warned that it "only had to be lucky once" in its bids to kill the prime minister. The IRA blamed Thatcher for the deaths of 10 republican prisoners during the 1981 hunger strike. Brighton was seen by many, both republicans and their enemies, as a revenge attack.

Republican leaders have subsequently claimed that it was Lady Thatcher's stubborn refusal to bend to the prisoners' demands for political status that prolonged the 1981 hunger strike. However, some republicans, including Richard O'Rawe, the former press officer for the IRA inside the Maze prison in 1981, have claimed there is evidence that the Thatcher government offered a compromise on the prisoners' demands in early July 1981 that could have ended the hunger strike and saved six lives.

The suggestion appears to be that Thatcher, while instinctively pro-unionist, was far more pragmatic than ideological in directing Northern Ireland policy. Four years after the hunger strike, she stunned unionists by signing the Anglo-Irish Agreement which gave the republic a say in the running of Northern Ireland. Her decision provoked widespread anger within the unionist community, who accused her of betrayal. Later at a mass protest involving more than 200,000 unionists at Belfast City Hall, her effigy was burned alongside that of the Irish tricolour. For that reason, while the union flag will fly half mast next week during her funeral, there is likely to be no mass outpouring of grief, even in unionist strongholds, where many have never forgiven her perceived treachery."

Cill Dara Shinn Féin Poblachtach staement :

"Thatcher dies: memory of Hunger Strikers lives on
The announcement of the death of the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on April 8 immediately brought to mind all of those who were victims of her policies and unrelenting right-wing ideology.

It affects us here in Ireland as well but around the world both directly and indirectly by her unstinting support for fascist regimes such as that of Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

In Ireland we of course think at once of the 1981 hunger strikes and the stonehearted response of Thatcher’s government to any appeal to a common humanity. The Patron of Republican Sinn Féin Ruairí Ó Brádaigh says that one of his abiding memories of the 1981 election campaign in support of the prisoner candidates is that at the very mention of the name Bobby Sands people would raise their heads whereas when Margaret Thatcher’s name was uttered people’s heads would drop.

Speaking on RTÉ radio’s News At One programme on April 8 the former deputy-leader of the SDLP Séamus Mallon stated that Thatcher viewed the 26-County State as merely a colony of Britain.

Under Thatcher a vicious war of terror was waged on the nationalist people of the Six Counties, which included a stepping up of the collusion between British State forces and loyalist death squads.

Human rights lawyers such as Pat Finucane, assassinated by a British-backed loyalist death squad in 1988, became prime targets of a British State determined to crush all opposition to its hold on Ireland.
To understand Thatcher you must grasp that she was an unreconstructed colonialist who could not imagine the sun ever setting on a fast-diminishing British world dominance.

Her imperialist adventure to wrest Las Malvinas back from Argentina in 1982 seemed more like something from 1882 but was very much part of the image she wished to cultivate.

Cloaking herself in jingoism and intolerance she was prepared to murder over 323 young Argentinean sailors on the Belgrano in order to bolster her grip on power in Britain.

Within her own State she had no scruples about waging war on entire communities and almost the entire trade union movement, openly declaring that the miners were “the enemy within”.

The scars of the social upheaval caused by Thatcherism are all too evident in the Britain of 2013. As one commentator noted she was prepared to sacrifice two-thirds of her people in order to satisfy one-third. Her legacy was one of polarisation and increased inequality.

From an Irish perspective she epitomised a British political establishment that had failed to learn from its experience by continuing to implement the same polices of coercion and oppression in response to the Irish people’s demand for national freedom. Sadly her successors seem as blinkered in their approach to Ireland.

The continued repression directed against Irish Republicans simply prolongs the conflict while internationally Thatcher’s faith in an unregulated market helped sow the seeds of the present world economic collapse with its dire consequences for working people throughout Europe and around the world.

So on this day we do not mourn her passing but here in Ireland we proudly remember those who died in defiance of her attacks on freedom and democracy.'

by DubsterThu Apr 11, 2013 08:58

I doubt that this statement stands up to full scrutiny. Yes their memory may live in their families memory or indeed even a small group outside of their family.

As many Irish people to name them and you would be lucky if you could get them to name any of them. Whereas Margaret thatcher's name is and will always be prominent for whatever reason in the public knowledge around the world.

As for the alleged article at the top of this thread, the ideas that are posted here actually ridicule any political legitimacy of the concepts of this forum. To think that you might believe that people would seriously believe this bull.

And if the truth be known all this bile that is being posted about her on this site is actually making sure that her memory ( which you maintain will be forgotten ) will be remembered long after she has been buried. It is a case of negative propaganda, so post away.

As a poster on another similar thread on this forum stated when taken to task about the attitude of the posts responded "everyone is entitled to their opinion", well this is mine.

Rest in peace Maggie,

by Brian Clarke - AllVoicesThu Apr 11, 2013 14:21

Memento mori

"This emblema was significantly displayed in a triclinium and is one of the most striking for the clarity of its allegorical representation. The topic is Hellenistic in origin and presents death as the great leveller who cancels out all differences of wealth and class. It is a theme that has come down to our days, as for example in the famous poem ’A livella by the comic actor A. de Curtis (Totò). In fact the composition is surmounted by a level (libella) with a plumb line, the instrument used by masons to get their constructions straight and level. The weight is death (the skull) below which are a butterfly (the soul) and a wheel (fortune).

On each side, suspended from the arms of the level and kept in perfect balance by death, are the symbols of wealth and power on the left (the sceptre and purple) and poverty on the right (the beggar’s scrip and stick). The theme, like the skeletons on the silverware in the treasure of Boscoreale, was intended to remind diners of the fleeting nature of earthly fortunes."

As someone who is from the south of Ireland, living at that time in the occupied 6 six counties, quite familiar with events around the hunger strikes, leading up to 1981 and thereafter, I will not get involved in a matter of opinion, on such a solemn matter. My best summation of the significance and effect of the drama played out at the time, is best described in a poem by WB Yeats, called A Terrible Beauty is Born.

"I HAVE met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse -
McCreesh and McIlwee
And McDonnell and Sands
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Apparently observers who should know better, just 90 miles away in Dublin town and in London, have not grasped the significance of this yet but then that is just one aspect of fascist censorship ignorance. The sacrifices made at that time, in the occupied 6 counties, like the preceding 1916 rising, guarantee the socialist Republic, sooner or later, despite the worst efforts of historical media revisionists and careerist politicians to rewrite history.

These extremely painful events visited on a significant part of the population, like the Irish holocaust, are seared, often unconsciously, so deeply into the non heartless, Irish psyche and DNA, that it is impossible to be ever purged, even if we wanted to. It has nothing to do with forgiveness. The point of overkill by the British in Ireland is passed long ago, with the resulting psychosis on the Irish psyche, along with sacrifices made, to the point, that it is in our DNA and their is little we can do about it, until it is resolved, peace processes or not.

That is what Brendan Behan referred to, when he said most people have a nationality but the Irish and Jews have a psychosis. That is not my opinion, that is a scientific fact, despite or best efforts of our denial to the contrary. The ten Hunger Strikers were just as aware of it as were the leaders of 1916.

Neither the British or their unfree neo-colonial state collaborators, have learned anything from the experience, like Margaret Thatcher, who regarded all of Ireland as still being a British colony. As a result they are destined to keep making the same mistakes over and over, until the lesson is learned. They are still making the same mistake again today, with internment of veteran republican icons like Marian Price and Martin Corey.

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

Elegy written in a English Churchyard by Thomas Gray

"They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools! - they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace."

Oration given in an Irish Churchyard by Padraig Pearse

Memento mori

The H-Block Song

by DubsterThu Apr 11, 2013 18:37

I spent most of my child hood in the north and was present on several occasions when IRA terrorists murdered villagers and laid waste to the village with their terrorist bombs (three on the same day on one occasion), this town was populated by Catholics and Protestant.

So I hold no respect for those terrorists or their dead, as they visited death and destruction on their own community with no regard for the people of that community.

So poems attempting to glorify their deeds can be posted and political hyperbole may be used to try and justify their actions but it does not stick with the majority of the population of this country.

But I thank you for your response.

by Des - NoneThu Apr 11, 2013 20:01

What concerns me is that the Prime Minister's wishes and ideology were not respected, The funeral arrangements were not put out to competitive tender in order to obtain best value. Such a process would have been cost effective. Looking down on us, the PM would be proud that her wishes had been respected. At least we can console ourselves that she is now up there with the greats, Hitler, Stalin and her old buddies Pol Pol and General Pinochet.

Well on that basis she is alongside all those terrorists who are idolised for their crimes against their own people.

I am sure they will have plenty to talk about.

by Sharon. - Individual.Thu Apr 11, 2013 22:53

Hi !

The annual commemoration in honour of the 22 Irish republicans who died on hunger strike between 1917 and 1981 will be held on Saturday 4th May 2013 at 2pm at the GPO in O'Connell Street , Dublin.
Whilst one of the above posters would apparently prefer to organise/attend a commemoration for the late Mrs Thatcher - if same is to be held in Ireland , that is - I would hope that its timing would not clash with the hunger strike commemoration.

Thanks!
Sharon.

by TerroristThu Apr 11, 2013 23:25

terrorist or freedom fighter? It's a moveable feast. Thatcher terrorised the miners. Pinochet terrorised the chilean people, US supports Al Qaeda terrorists in Syria, They are terrorising the Syrian people. Libya was destroyed by imported fanatical jihadi terrorists too. Israel terrorises the palestinians. The US terrorises us all with their 7000 nuclear weapons on constant alert, their biological and chemical weapons programs, their fracking, their deliberate financial destruction of our economies, and their GMO foods.

Apparently the US government who started all this "war on terror" nonsense still refuse to define what terrorism is.

I guess they are afraid that no matter how they put it, they will be defining themselves as state terrorists.

IRA were a response to an occupation by a foreign power. In comparison to the people referring to everyone else as terrorists (to serve their own interests), they were altar boys!

by DubsterThu Apr 11, 2013 23:55

Firstly I have no interest in having a ceremony in Ireland for Mrs thatcher.
I just believe that some of the bile being spewed forth is ridiculous. If you expect respect fir your dead respect the dead of others.

As for the IRA being classed as boys In comparison to others, it is absolutely ridiculous, escapist and notthing but contemptuous to the victims of their crimes and their families. The IRA committed crimes against their own people be they catholic or Protestant (but then again they probably don't look on Protestants as their own people).

The senseless incineration of people at the Le Mon hotel and the killing of innocent civilians on either side of the political/religious divide cannot be easily dismissed by attempting to compare it to other acts. This can and should also be the same situation for so called loyalist terrorist organisations.

I don't see a massive turnout for the hungerstrike ceremony the weekend as I believe that the majority of the population dong count it as significant, but I wish you good weather and hope you enjoy it.

You must be like your grandmother are you ? Are you Irish ? Are you a jackeen? A jackeen is a small I'm alright jack and a me feiner!

by DubsterFri Apr 12, 2013 08:27

Firstly one side of my family is from Northern Ireland, if you read one all my posts you would have gathered that. as you obviously don't know anything about my grandmother your point is ridiculous, for all you know she could have been a victim of the IRA.

Secondly I AM Irish, and because I don't agree with or in any way support the actions of a terrorist grouping or their commemoration, or indeed their supporters doesn't make me or all those other people like me, any less Irish. This is the common recourse by supporters of this small group of Irish people who do support them and commemorate them.

Thirdly with regards to your Jackeen comment, this is another common recourse to try and disparage opponents to your opinions, and is a childish and ridiculous riposte, which once again shows the contempt that a small group of people have against the majority who do not agree with their tactics or political aspirations. I have NO King or Queen and my flag is the tri-colour not a union flag so your ancient comment is useless and to be honest does little to show that Republicanism or the majority of it's supporters have come into the 21st century. As for the me feiner comment well if I remember correctly Sinn Fein means something like ourselves alone, which to me says a lot more about the people who use that title, they are a by their chosen title, introvert and self serving and care nothing for the opinion of others. If I also remember that same ideology led this country into a civil war when a minority went against the democratic wish of the majority under the pretext that the
minority could use and means possible to get their way and that the majority didn't know or were not iintelligent enough to know what they were doing.

I do not agree with the political aspirations of many people here but I would defend their right to express them in a peaceful and respectful way.

And respect was the reason I initiated my posts.

I thank you for your response.

by Sharon. - Individual.Fri Apr 12, 2013 11:16

Hi Dubster !

"Firstly I have no interest in having a ceremony in Ireland for Mrs thatcher."
If you were to organise a ceremony/commemoration for Mrs Thatcher , would you do so in O' Connell Street , at the GPO , and do you believe you would draw more supporters than a ceremony/commemoration for the 22 hunger-strikers would garner ie would you get "...a massive turnout.." , do you think ?

"I just believe that some of the bile being spewed forth is ridiculous. If you expect respect fir your dead respect the dead of others."
Mrs Thatcher was in/directly responsible for , amongst other peoples, the deaths of Irish and Argentinian people , whom she had no hesitation in calling 'criminals'. No "respect" there.

"As for the IRA being classed as boys In comparison to others, it is absolutely ridiculous, escapist and notthing but contemptuous to the victims of their crimes and their families. The IRA committed crimes against their own people be they catholic or Protestant (but then again they probably don't look on Protestants as their own people)."
Are republicans responsible for the deaths of any atheists , do you know, seeing as you believe religion has something to do with the situation ?

"The senseless incineration of people at the Le Mon hotel and the killing of innocent civilians on either side of the political/religious divide cannot be easily dismissed by attempting to compare it to other acts. This can and should also be the same situation for so called loyalist terrorist organisations.
And for the British Army , and their various 'militia'.

"I don't see a massive turnout for the hungerstrike ceremony the weekend as I believe that the majority of the population dong count it as significant, but I wish you good weather and hope you enjoy it."
See my first comment , above.
And we are not 'fair weather' supporters , Dubster - we'll be there , at the GPO in Dublin city centre , on Saturday 4th May 2013 , at 2pm , regardless of the weather.(And I don't think the "Grandmother" comment on this thread was directed at you .)

Thanks,
Sharon.

by Brian Clarke - AllVoicesFri Apr 12, 2013 11:50

Dear Dubster,

Please understand that there is nothing personal in all of this, in fact despite being ignorant, you sound like a nice young man. Our twisted DNA is not your fault, no more than the pedigree of a mongrel's is. I am neither a dissident protestant or a catholic and I couldn't give two fiddlers about yours.However 22 hunger strikers is 'not self-serving' is it? 'Self-serving' another Max Clifford phrase of spooky spin doctors.

So I don't know your Grandmother ? Are you sure about that ? You have her in your DNA and you have revealed yourself in your comments, whether you like it or not, just like I have my Irish DNA, despite a Holocaust even greater than the Jewish one, described in the following terms.

They live on beasts only, and live like beasts. They have not progressed at all from the habits of pastoral living. ..This is a filthy people, wallowing in vice. Of all peoples it is the least instructed in the rudiments of the faith. They do not yet pay tithes or first fruits or contract marriages. They do not avoid incest.
- Giraldus Cambrensis/Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland, 12th Century

How godly a deed it is to overthrow so wicked a race the world may judge: for my part I think there cannot be a greater sacrifice to God.
- Edward Barkley, describing how the forces of the Earl of Essex slaughtered the entire population of Rathlin Island, Co. Antrim, 1575

Marry those be the most barbaric and loathy conditions of any people (I think) under heaven...They do use all the beastly behaviour that may be, they oppress all men, they spoil as well the subject, as the enemy; they steal, they are cruel and bloody, full of revenge, and delighting in deadly execution, licentious, swearers and blasphemers, common ravishers of women, and murderers of children.
- Edmund Spenser, A View of the State of Ireland, 1596

And first I have to find fault with the abuse of language; that is, for the speaking of Irish among the English, which as it is unnatural that any people should love another's language more than their own, so it is very inconvenient and the cause of many other evils. ...It seemeth strange to me that the English should take more delight to speak that language than their own, whereas they should, methinks, rather take scorn to acquaint their tongues thereto. For it hath ever been the use of the conqueror to despise the language of the conquered and to force him by all means to learn his.
- A View of the State of Ireland

I have often said, and written, it is Famine which must consume [the Irish]; our swords and other endeavours work not that speedy effect which is expected for their overthrow.
- English Viceroy Arthur Chichester writing to Elizabeth I's chief advisor, Nov. 1601

The time hath been, when they lived like Barbarians, in woods, in bogs, and in desolate places, without politic law, or civil government, neither embracing religion, law or mutual love. That which is hateful to all the world besides is only beloved and embraced by the Irish, I mean civil wars and domestic dissensions .... the Cannibals, devourers of men's flesh, do learn to be fierce amongst themselves, but the Irish, without all respect, are even more cruel to their neighbours.
- Barnaby Rich, A New Description of Ireland, 1610

All wisdom advises us to keep this [Irish] kingdom as much subordinate and dependent on England as possible; and, holding them from manufacture of wool (which unless otherwise directed, I shall by all means discourage), and then enforcing them to fetch their cloth from England, how can they depart from us without nakedness and beggary?
- Lord Stafford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in a letter to King Charles I, 1634

So ended the fairest promise that Ireland had ever known of becoming a prosperous and a happy country.
- Sir William Temple, about 1673, (the export of wool from Ireland to England was forbidden in 1660)

In all countries, more or less, paupers may be discovered; but an entire nation of paupers is what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland. To explain the social condition of such a country, it would be only necessary to recount its miseries and its sufferings; the history of the poor is the history of Ireland.
- Gustave de Beaumont, French visitor, 1839

Ireland is like a half-starved rat that crosses the path of an elephant. What must the elephant do? Squelch it - by heavens - squelch it.
- Thomas Carlyle, British essayist, 1840s

...being altogether beyond the power of man, the cure had been applied by the direct stroke of an all-wise Providence in a manner as unexpected and as unthought of as it is likely to be effectual.

The judgement of God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson, that calamity must not be too much mitigated. …The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.
Charles Trevelyan, head of administration for famine relief, 1840s

[existing policies] will not kill more than one million Irish in 1848 and that will scarcely be enough to do much good.
- Queen Victoria's economist, Nassau Senior

A Celt will soon be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as the red man on the banks of Manhattan.
- The Times, editorial, 1848

I am haunted by the human chimpanzees I saw along that hundred miles of horrible country...to see white chimpanzees is dreadful; if they were black one would not see it so much, but their skins, except where tanned by exposure, are as white as ours.
- Cambridge historian Charles Kingsley, letter to his wife from Ireland, 1860

A creature manifestly between the Gorilla and the Negro is to be met with in some of the lowest districts of London and Liverpool by adventurous explorers. It comes from Ireland, whence it has contrived to migrate; it belongs in fact to a tribe of Irish savages: the lowest species of Irish Yahoo. When conversing with its kind it talks a sort of gibberish. It is, moreover, a climbing animal, and may sometimes be seen ascending a ladder ladden with a hod of bricks.
Satire entitled "The Missing Link", from the British magazine Punch, 1862

This would be a grand land if only every Irishman would kill a Negro, and be hanged for it. I find this sentiment generally approved - sometimes with the qualification that they want Irish and Negroes for servants, not being able to get any other.
- British historian Edward Freeman, writing on his return from America, about 1881

...Furious fanaticism; a love of war and disorder; a hatred for order and patient industry; no accumulative habits; restless; treacherous and uncertain: look to Ireland...
As a Saxon, I abhor all dynasties, monarchies and bayonet governments, but this latter seems to be the only one suitable for the Celtic man.
Robert Knox, anatomist, describing his views on the "Celtic character", 1850

The Celts are not among the progressive, initiative races, but among those which supply the materials rather than the impulse of history...The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans and the Teutons are the only makers of history, the only authors of advancement. ...Subjection to a people of a higher capacity for government is of itself no misfortune; and it is to most countries the condition of their political advancement.
- British historian Lord Acton, 1862

You would not confide free representative institutions to the Hottentots [savages], for instance.
- Lord Salisbury, who opposed Home Rule for Ireland, 1886

My guess Dubster, is that we are both Celts from the relatively small island of Ireland. If we are smart we will not let the City of London, with the above mentality divide us, to enable them rule and exploit. We will resolve our differences and reconcile our DNA without bloodletting, if we are reasonably intelligent. We will rejoice in our differences in dacent arguments, without taking ourselves too seriously. Your dead granny, can be found in the following video, bluenose!